This is Lindsay Edward

Lindsay M. Edward (1919–2007) was an Australian abstract artist, mosaicist and teacher. He was born in Victoria on 26 August 1919.

Edward studied at the National Gallery Art School from 1938–41 under Charles Wheeler and W.B. McInnes. For 31 years he was allied with the Art School at the Royal Melbourne Technical College (and former Working Men’s College) now known as RMIT, where he had been a student, and where he was teacher 1947–1954, head of painting, 1954–67 and head of college 1967–79. As head of the art department, Edward set taking place an initiative for systematically developing the RMIT Art Collection, and to make Australian art more accessible to staff and students. He retired from RMIT in August 1979, after which he made many painting trips to Australia’s outback.

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His semi-abstract doing was exhibited widely in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth and described by Professor Bernard Smith as “a perceptive art subsequently its own quiet distinction”. He described his edit to exclusion as understandably wanting “to place sequences of shapes, colours and tones upon a surface in an abstract manner, like the clarification of a Bach fugue”.

Edward with undertook mural commissions for the Victoria Housing Commission, and for church mosaic panels. One of his murals made of glass mosaic tiles can be seen upon the old-fashioned State Library of Queensland building at 159 William St, Brisbane. This was the winning way in in an Australia-wide competition for a mural to adorn the walls of the Brisbane Public Library in epoch for the 100-year celebration of responsible government in Queensland in 1959. On winning the competition in 1958, Edward explained that his mosaic design was not a literal subject but rather a ‘basic formation of organic forms indicating addition and development’. Photographs of the winning mural were exhibited in Melbourne at Gallery A in September 1960, and were thought to “reveal a air in design combined in strength to figure compositions on Greek pottery”. This mural contributed to the listing of the former State Library Building on the State Heritage Register in 1992. Edward’s mural is discussed in the book Monumental Queensland: sign posts upon a cultural landscape. A close-up image of the mural taken by Graham de Gruchy can be seen at the UQ eSpace Library.

Edward had nearly 20 solo exhibitions of his deed between 1944-1993. In the 1950s he showed paintings at many Melbourne galleries, including Stanley Coe Gallery, Peter Bray Gallery, the Victorian Artists’ Society Galleries, and Gallery A. In the 1970s he exhibited in supplementary Melbourne galleries – the Warehouse Galleries, Realities Galleries and Powell St Gallery and in the 1980s and 1990s at David Ellis and the Eastgate Galleries in Hawthorn. In Sydney he exhibited at the Holdsworth Gallery and in Perth, the Quentin Gallery. He as well as exhibited at the RMIT Gallery in October 1979 on the occasion of his retirement.

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His play in is held in numerous collections, including the National Gallery of Victoria, the National Gallery of Australia, ArtBank, and several regional and tertiary galleries in Victoria, including RMIT.

Lindsay Edward died upon 9 January 2007. His obituary was written by Jenny Zimmer who taught art history at RMIT during his time there, and was published in The Age.

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